The Romance of a Plain Man

As time went on this passionate ambition, which was so closely bound up with my love for Sally, absorbed me even to the exclusion of the feeling from which it had drawn its greatest strength. The responsibilities of my position, the partial control of the large sums of money that passed through my hands, crowded my days with schemes and anxieties, and kept me tossing, sleepless yet with wearied brain, through many a night. For pleasure I had no time; Sally I saw only for a hurried or an absent-minded hour or two at meals, or when I came up too tired to think or to talk in the evenings. Often I fell asleep over my cigar after dinner, while she dressed and hastened, with her wreathed head and bare shoulders, to a reception or a ball. A third of my time was spent in New York, and during my absence, it never occurred to me to enquire how she filled her long, empty days. She was sure of me, she trusted me, I knew; and in the future, I told myself when I had leisure to think of it – next year, perhaps – I should begin again to play the part of an ardent lover. She was as desirable – she was far dearer to me than she had ever been in her life, but while I held her safe and close in my clasp, my mind reached out with its indomitable energy after the uncertain, the unattained. I had my wife – what I wanted now was a fortune and a great name to lay at her feet.

And all these months did she ever question, ever ask herself, while she watched me struggling day after day with the lust for power, if the thing that I sought to give her would in the end turn to Dead Sea fruit at her lips? Question she may have done in her heart, but no hint of it ever reached me – no complaint of her marriage ever disturbed the outward serenity in which we lived. Yet, deep in myself, I heard always a still small voice, which told me that she demanded something far subtler and finer than I had given – something that belonged inherently to the nature of George Bolingbroke rather than to mine. Even now, though she loved me and not George, it was George who was always free, who was always amiable, who was always just ready and just waiting to be called. On another day, a month or two later, he came in again with his blossom of sweet alyssum, and again her eyes grew shining and grateful, while the old bruise throbbed quickly to life in my heart.

"Is it all right still?" she asked, and he answered, "All right," with his rare smile, which lent a singular charm to his softened features.

Then he glanced across at me and made, I realised, an effort to be friendly.

"You ought to get a horse, Ben," he remarked, "it would keep you from getting glum. If you'd hunted with us yesterday, you would have seen Bonny Page take a gate like a bird."

"I tried to follow," said Sally, "but Prince Charlie refused."

"You mean I wouldn't let go your bridle," returned George, in a half-playful, half-serious tone.

The bruise throbbed again. Here, also, I was shut out – I who had carried potatoes to George's door while he was off learning to follow the hounds. His immaculate, yet careless, dress; the perfection of his manner, which seemed to make him a part of the surroundings in which he stood; the very smoothness and slenderness of the hand that rested on Sally's chair – all these produced in me a curious and unreasonable sensation of anger.

"I forbid you to jump, Sally," I said, almost sharply; "you know I hate it."

She leaned forward, glancing first at me and then at George, with an expression of surprise.

"Why, what's the matter, Ben?" she asked. "He's a perfect bear, isn't he, George?"

"The best way to keep her from jumping," observed George, pleasantly enough, though his face flushed, "is to be on the spot to catch her bridle or her horse's mane or anything else that's handy. It's the only means I've found successful, for there was never a Bland yet who didn't go straight ahead and do the thing he was forbidden to. Miss Mitty told me with pride that she had been eating lobster, which she always hated, and I discovered her only reason was that the doctor had ordered her not to touch it."

"Then I shan't forbid, I'll entreat," I replied, recovering myself with an effort. "Please don't jump, Sally, I implore it."

"I won't jump if you'll come with me, Ben," she answered.

I laughed shortly, for how was it possible to explain to two Virginians of their blood and habits that a man of six feet two inches could not sit a horse for the first time without appearing ridiculous in the eyes even of the woman who loved him? They had grown up together in the fields or at the stables, and a knowledge of horse-flesh was as much a part of their birthright as the observance of manners. The one I could never acquire; the other I had attained unaided and in the face of the tremendous barriers that shut me out. The repeated insistence upon the fact that Sally was a Bland aroused in me, whenever I met it, an irritation which I tried in vain to dispel. To be a Bland meant, after all, simply to be removed as far as possible from any temperamental relation to the race of Starrs.

"I wish I could, dear," I answered, as I rose to go out, "but remember, I've never been on a horse in my life and it's too late to begin."

"Oh, I forgot. Of course you can't," she rejoined. "So if George isn't strong enough to hold me back, I'll have to go straight after Bonny."

"I promise you I'll swing on with all my might, Ben," said George, with a laugh in which I felt there was an amiable condescension, as from the best horseman in his state to a man who had never ridden to hounds.

A little later, as I walked down the street, past the old grey house, under the young budding leaves of the sycamores, the recollection of this amiable condescension returned to me like the stab of a knife. The image of Sally, mounted on Prince Charlie, at George's side, troubled my thoughts, and I wondered, with a pang, if the people who saw them together would ask themselves curiously why she had chosen me. To one and all of them, – to Miss Mitty, to Bonny Page, to Dr. Theophilus, – the mystery, I felt, was as obscure to-day as it had been in the beginning of our love. Why was it? I questioned angrily, and wherein lay the subtle distinction which divided my nature from George Bolingbroke's and even from Sally's? The forces of democracy had made way for me, and yet was there something stronger than democracy – and this something, fine and invincible as a blade, I had felt long ago in the presence of Miss Mitty and Miss Matoaca. Over my head, under the spreading boughs of the sycamore, a window was lifted, and between the parted lace curtains, the song of Miss Mitty's canary floated out into the street. As the music entered my thoughts, I remembered suddenly the box of sweet alyssum blooming on the window-sill under the swinging cage, and there flashed into my consciousness the meaning of the flowers George had laid beside Sally's plate. For her sake he had gone to Miss Mitty in the sad old house, and that little blossom was the mute expression of a service he had rendered joyfully in the name of love. The gratitude in Sally's eyes was made clear to me, and a helpless rage at my own blindness, my own denseness, flooded my heart. George, because of some inborn fineness of perception, had discerned the existence of a sorrow in my wife to which I, the man whom she loved and who loved her, had been insensible. He had understood and had comforted – while I, engrossed in larger matters, had gone on my way unheeding and indifferent. Then the anger against myself turned blindly upon George, and I demanded passionately if he would stand forever in my life as the embodiment of instincts and perceptions that the generations had bred? Would I fail forever in little things because I had been cursed at birth by an inability to see any except big ones? And where I failed would George be always ready to fill the unspoken need and to bestow the unasked-for sympathy?

CHAPTER XXIII

IN WHICH I WALK ON THIN ICE

On a November evening, when we had been married several years, I came home after seven o'clock, and found Sally standing before the bureau while she fastened a bunch of violets to the bosom of her gown.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get up earlier, but there's a good deal of excitement over a failure in Wall Street," I said. "Are you going out?"

Her hands fell from her bosom, and as she turned toward me, I saw that she was dressed as though for a ball.

"Not to-night, Ben. I had an engagement, but I broke it because I wanted to spend the evening with you. I thought we might have a nice cosy time all by ourselves."

"What a shame, darling. I've promised Bradley I'd do a little work with him in my study. He's coming at half-past eight and will probably keep me till midnight. I'll have to hurry. Did you put on that gorgeous gown just for me?"

"Just for you." There was an expression on her face, half humorous, half resentful, that I had never seen there before. "What day is this, Ben?" she asked, as I was about to enter my dressing-room.

"The nineteenth of November," I replied carelessly, looking back at her with my hand on the door.

"The nineteenth of November," she echoed slowly, as if saying the words to herself.

I was already on the threshold when light broke on me in a flash, and I turned, blind with remorse, and seized her in my arms.

"Sally, Sally, I am a brute!"

She laughed a little, drawing away, not coming closer.

"Ben, are you happy?"

"As happy as a king. I'll telephone Bradley not to come."

"Is it important?"

"Yes, very important. That failure I told you of is a pretty serious matter."

"Then let him come. All days are the same, after all, when one comes to think of it."

Her hand went to the violets at her breast, and as my eyes followed it, a sudden intuitive dread entered my mind like an impulse of rage.

"I intended to send you flowers, Sally, but in the rush, I forgot. Whose are those you are wearing?"

She moved slightly, and the perfume of the violets floated from the cloud of lace on her bosom.

"George sent them," she answered quietly.

Before she spoke I had known it – the curse of my life was to be that George would always remember – and the intuitive dread I had felt changed, while I stood there, to the dull ache of remorse.

"Take them off, and I'll get you others if there's a shop open in the city," I said. Then, as she hesitated, wavering between doubt and surprise, I left the room, descended the steps with a rush, and picking up my hat, hurried in search of a belated florist who had not closed. At the corner a man, going out to dine, paused to fasten his overcoat under the electric light, which blazed fitfully in the wind; and as I approached and he looked up, I saw that it was George Bolingbroke.

"It's time all sober married men were at home dressing for dinner," he observed in a whimsical tone.

The wind had brought a glow of colour into his face, and he looked very handsome as he stood there, in his fur-lined coat, under the blaze of light.

"I was kept late down town," I replied. "The General and I get all the hard knocks while you take it easy."

"Well, I like an easy world, and I believe your world is pretty much about what you make it. Where are you rushing? Do you go my way?"

"No, I'm turning off here. There's something I forgot this morning and I came out to attend to it."

"Don't fall into the habit of forgetting. It's a bad one and it's sure to grow on you – and whatever you forget," he added with a laugh as we parted, "don't forget for a minute of your life that you've married Sally."

He passed on, still laughing pleasantly, and quickening my steps, I went to the corner of Broad Street, where I found a florist's shop still lighted and filled with customers. There were no violets left, and while I waited for a sheaf of pink roses, with my eyes on the elaborate funeral designs covering the counter, I heard a voice speaking in a low tone beyond a mass of flowering azalea beside which I stood.

"Yes, her mother married beneath her, also," it said; "that seems to be the unfortunate habit of the Blands."

I turned quickly, my face hot with anger, and as I did so my eyes met those of a dark, pale lady, through the thick rosy clusters of the azalea. When she recognised me, she flushed slightly, and then moving slowly around the big green tub that divided us, she held out her hand with a startled and birdlike flutter of manner.

"I missed you at the reception last night, Mr. Starr," she said; "Sally was there, and I had never seen her looking so handsome."

Then as the sheaf of roses was handed to me, she vanished behind the azaleas again, while I turned quickly away and carried my fragrant armful out into the night.

When I reached home, I was met on the staircase by Jessy, who ran, laughing, before me to Sally, with the remark that I had come back bringing an entire rose garden in my hands.

"There weren't any violets left, darling," I said, as I entered and tossed the flowers on the couch, "and even these roses aren't fresh."

"Well, they're sweet anyway, poor things," she returned, gathering them into her lap, while her hands caressed the half-opened petals. "It was like you, Ben, when you did remember, to bring me the whole shopful."

Breaking one from the long stem, she fastened it in place of the violets in the cloud of lace on her bosom.

"Pink suits me better, after all," she remarked gayly; "and now you must let Bradley come, and Jessy and I will go to the theatre."

"I suppose he'll have to come," I said moodily, "but I'll be up earlier to-morrow, Sally, if I wreck the bank in order to do it."

All the next day I kept the importance of fulfilling this promise in my mind, and at five o'clock, I abruptly broke off a business appointment to rush breathlessly home in the hope of finding Sally ready to walk or to drive. As I turned the corner, however, I saw, to my disappointment, that several riding horses were waiting under the young maples beside the pavement, and when I entered the house, I heard the merry flutelike tones of Bonny Page from the long drawing-room, where Sally was serving tea.

For a minute the unconquerable shyness I always felt in the presence of women held me, rooted in silence, on the threshold. Then, "Is that you, Ben?" floated to me in Sally's voice, and pushing the curtains aside, I entered the room and crossed to the little group gathered before the fire. In the midst of it, I saw the tall, almost boyish figure of Bonny Page, and the sight of her gallant air and her brilliant, vivacious smile aroused in me instantly the oppressive self-consciousness of our first meeting. I remembered suddenly that I had dressed carelessly in the morning, that I had tied my cravat in a hurry, that my coat fitted me badly and I had neglected to send it back. All the innumerable details of life – the little things I despised or overlooked – swarmed, like stinging gnats, into my thoughts while I stood there.

"You're just in time for tea, Ben," said Sally; "it's a pity you don't drink it."

"And you're just in time for a scolding," remarked Bonny. "Do you know, if I had a husband who wouldn't ride with me, I'd gallop off the first time I went hunting with another man."

"You'd better start, Ben. It wouldn't take you three days to follow Bonny over a gate," said Ned Marshall, one of her many lovers, eager, I detected at once, to appear intimate and friendly. He was a fine, strong, athletic young fellow, with a handsome, smooth-shaven face, a slightly vacant laugh, and a figure that showed superbly in his loose-fitting riding clothes.

"When I get the time, I'll buy a horse and begin," I replied; "but all hours are working hours to me now, Sally will tell you."

"It's exactly as if I'd married a railroad engine," remarked Sally, laughing, and I realised by the strained look in their faces, that this absorption in larger matters – this unchangeable habit of thought that I could not shake off even in a drawing-room – puzzled them, because of their inherent incapacity to understand how it could be. My mind, which responded so promptly to the need for greater exertions, was reduced to mere leaden weight by this restless movement of little things. And this leaden weight, this strained effort to become something other than I was by nature, was reflected in the smiling faces around me as in a mirror. The embarrassment in my thoughts extended suddenly to my body, and I asked myself the next minute if Sally contrasted my heavy silence with the blithe self-confidence and the sportive pleasantries of Ned Marshall? Was she beginning already, unconsciously to her own heart, perhaps, to question if the passion I had given her would suffice to cover in her life the absence of the unspoken harmony in outward things? With the question there rose before me the figure of George Bolingbroke, as he bent over and laid the blossom of sweet alyssum beside her plate; and, as at the instant in which I had watched him, I felt again the physical soreness which had become a part of my furious desire to make good my stand.

When Bonny and Ned Marshall had mounted and ridden happily away in the dusk, Sally came back with me from the door, and stood, silent and pensive, for a moment, while she stroked my arm.

"You look tired, Ben. If you only wouldn't work so hard."

"I must work. It's the only thing I'm good for."

"But I see so little of you and – and I get so lonely."

"When I've won out, I'll stop, and then you shall see me every living minute of the day, if you choose."

"That's so far off, and it's now I want you. I'd like you to take me away, Ben – to take me somewhere just as you did when we were married."

Her face was very soft in the firelight, and stooping, I kissed her cheek as she looked up at me, with a grave, almost pensive smile on her lips.

"I wish I could, sweetheart, but I'm needed here so badly that I don't dare run off for a day. You've married a working-man, and he's obliged to stick to his place."

She said nothing more to persuade me, but from that evening until the spring, when our son was born, it seemed to me that she retreated farther and farther into that pale dream distance where I had first seen and desired her. With the coming of the child I got her back to earth and to reality, and when the warm little body, wrapped in flannels, was first placed in my arms, it seemed to me that the thrill of the mere physical contact had in it something of the peculiar starlike radiance of my bridal night. Sally, lying upon the pillow under a blue satin coverlet, smiled up at me with flushed cheeks and eyes shining with love, and while I stood there, some divine significance in her look, in her helplessness, in the oneness of the three of us drawn together in that little circle of life, moved my heart to the faint quiver of apprehension that had come to me while I stood by her side before the altar in old Saint John's.

When she was well, and the long, still days of the summer opened, little Benjamin was wrapped in a blue veil and taken in Aunt Euphronasia's arms to visit Miss Mitty in the old grey house.

"What did she say, mammy? How did she receive him?" asked Sally eagerly, when the old negress returned.

"She ain' said nuttin' 'tall, honey, cep'n 'huh,'" replied Aunt Euphronasia, in an aggrieved and resentful tone. "Dar she wuz a-settin' jes' ez prim by de side er dat ar box er sweet alyssum, en ez soon ez I lay eyes on her, I said, 'Howdy, Miss Mitty, hyer's Marse Ben's en Miss Sally's baby done come to see you.' Den she kinder turnt her haid, like oner dese yer ole wedder cocks on a roof, en she looked me spang in de eye en said 'huh' out right flat jes' like dat."

"But didn't you show her his pretty blue eyes, mammy?" persisted Sally.

"Go way f'om hyer, chile, Miss Mitty done seen de eyes er a baby befo' now. I knowed dat, en I lowed in my mind dat you ain' gwinter git aroun' her by pretendin' you kin show her nuttin'. So I jes' begin ter sidle up ter her en kinder talk sof ez ef'n I 'uz a-talkin' ter myself. 'Dish yer chile is jes' de spi't er Marse Bland,' I sez, 'en dar ain' noner de po' wite trash in de look er him needer.'"

"Aunt Euphronasia, how dare you!" said Sally, sternly.

"Well, 'tis de trufe, ain't hit? Dar ain' nuttin er de po' wite trash in de look er him, is dar?"

"And what did she say then, Aunt Euphronasia?"

"Who? Miss Mitty? She sez 'huh' again jes' ez she done befo'. Miss Mitty ain't de kind dat's gwinter eat her words, honey. W'at she sez, she sez, en she's gwinter stick up ter hit. The hull time I 'uz dar, I ain' never yearn nuttin' but 'huh!' pass thoo her mouf."

"I knew she was proud, Ben, but I didn't know she was so cruel as to visit it on this precious angel," said Sally, on the point of tears; "and I believe Jessy is the same way. Nobody cares about him except his doting mother."

"What's become of his doting father?"

"Oh, his doting father is entirely too busy with his darling stocks."

"Sally," I asked seriously, "don't you understand that all this – everything I'm doing – is just for you and the boy?"

"Is it, Ben?" she responded, and the next minute, "Of course, I understand it. How could I help it?"

She was always reasonable – it was one of her greatest charms, and I knew that if I were to open my mind to her at the moment, she would enter into my troubles with all the insight of her resourceful sympathy. But I kept silence, restrained by some masculine instinct that prompted me to shut the business world outside the doors of home.

"Well, I must go downtown, dear; I don't see much of you these days, do I?"

"Not much, but I know you're here to stay and that's a good deal of comfort."

"I'm glad you've got the baby. He keeps you company."

She looked up at me with the puzzling expression, half humour, half resentment, I had seen frequently in her face of late. If she stopped to question whether I really imagined that a child of three months was all the companionship required by a woman of her years, she let no sign of it escape the smiling serenity of her lips. On her knees little Benjamin lay perfectly quiet while he stared straight up at the ceiling with his round blue eyes like the eyes of an animated doll.

"Yes, he is company," she answered gently; and stooping to kiss them both, I ran downstairs, hurried into my overcoat, and went out into the street.

As I closed the door behind me, I saw the General's buggy turning the corner, and a minute later he drew up under the young maples beside the pavement, and made room for me under the grey fur rug that covered his knees.

"I don't like the way things are behaving in Wall Street, Ben," he said. "Did that last smash cost you anything?"

"About two hundred thousand dollars, General, but I hadn't spoken of it."

"I hope the bank hasn't been loaning any more money to the Cumberland and Tidewater. I meant to ask you about that several days ago."

"The question comes up before the directors this afternoon. We'll probably refuse to advance any further loans, but they've already drawn on us pretty heavily, you understand, and we may have to go in deeper to save what we've got."

"Well, it looks pretty shaky, that's all I've got to say. If Jenkins doesn't butt in and reorganise it, it will probably go into the hands of a receiver before the year is up. Is it the bank or your private investments you've been worrying over?"

"My own affairs entirely. You see I'd dealt pretty largely through Cross and Hankins, and I don't know exactly what their failure will mean to me."

"A good many men in the country are asking themselves that question. A smash like that isn't over in a day or a night. But I'm afraid you've been spending too much money, Ben. Is your wife extravagant?"

"No, it's my own fault. I've never liked her to consider the value of money."

"It's a bad way to begin. Women have got it in their blood, and I remember my poor mother used to say she never felt that a dollar was worth anything until she spent it. If I were you, I'd pull up and go slowly, but it's mighty hard to do after you've once started at a gallop."

"I don't think I'll have any trouble, but I hate like the deuce to speak of it to Sally."

"That's your damned delicacy. It puts me in mind of my cousin, Jenny Tyler, who married that scamp who used to throw his boots at her. Once when she was a girl she stayed with us for a summer, and old Judge Lacy, one of the ugliest men of his day, fell over head and heels in love with her. She couldn't endure the sight of him, and yet, if you'll believe my word, though she was as modest as an angel, I actually found him kissing her one day in a summer-house. 'Bless my soul, Jenny!' I exclaimed, 'why didn't you tell that old baboon to stop hugging you and behave himself?' 'O Cousin George,' she replied, blushing the colour of a cherry, 'I didn't like to mention it.' Now, that's the kind of false modesty you've got, Ben."